I’ve noticed a surge in interest in privacy and tracking. Several family members and friends have closed Facebook accounts, set Twitter and FriendFeed sites to “private”, and stopped using Chrome (or other tools that are too heavily reliant on one company). The interest in privacy is still somewhat isolated – many people appear to feel that paying with personal data to use monetarily-free tools is a reasonable transaction. Off line, very few things are private – it wouldn’t take someone much time to find out my daily commute, coffee drinking habits, etc. Online, however, this information is more readily available. We can discover personal information about others with very little effort.
Even more disconcerting is the fact that large companies like Google are incredibly active in tracking users activity. Facebook is direct in stating that they collect indirect information about site users and that they will “collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook.” Privacy is an issue that flares up occasionally, but we are quickly placated and distracted.